Please stop me from installing windows server

[anodos]

Kind of like the guides that our forum users have created over the years?

The existing samba config guides tend to be poorly-maintained, out-of-date, and written by those who don't necessarily understand how the software works. Changes happen and guides don't work anymore.

Heck, I've been a samba admin for years and still occasionally find it a terrific source of frustration. For instance, the last update for badlock added several new smb.conf parameters, and changed the defaults of others. Have these made it into online smb.conf documentation? Nope. :/

Is the solution to write another how-to? I'm not really sure.

 

[DiViDeR]

Kind of like the guides that our forum users have created over the years?

Exactly, and the ones I've read so far have been very useful ... and the more the merrier if it makes life easier for noobies ;)

 

[ianfs]

It's my observation (no doubt incomplete and at least partially incorrect) that the idea of never logging in as root, and instead sudo-ing everything, is somewhat of a Linux-ism, and even more particularly a Ubuntu-ism. BSD types seem to be rather more comfortable with using the root account.

This is definitely not a 'linux thing' but has been common practice across all *Nix operating systems for decades. The reason being the concept of least privileges as root can easily destroy a system with a single errant keystroke.

 

[danb35]

The part that seems to be more Linux-y, and particularly Ubuntu-y, is using sudo. Log in as unprivileged user, su to root, do your stuff, drop out of su--that's pretty common. sudo everything (and prevent root from logging in completely) is less so, from what I've seen.

 

[jgreco]

This is definitely not a 'linux thing' but has been common practice across all *Nix operating systems for decades. The reason being the concept of least privileges as root can easily destroy a system with a single errant keystroke.

That's so highly dependent on so many things, though. For example, a lot of appliance class devices (FreeNAS, ESXi, pretty much any BusyBox device) aren't strongly oriented in that direction.

A lot of us older sysadmins recall "Don't login as root, use su". I've never found much of a use for sudo, except as a bootstrap ("sudo csh") on systems like OS X that seem to want to enforce its use and where I'm too lazy to go and fix it to work properly. In decades as a sysadmin I'm having trouble thinking of any time that sudo would have saved me from something bad.

It seems that sudo became real popular around the time that Linux became common, and I started seeing cases where users who couldn't be trusted with su access might still be given sudo access.

 

[anodos]

That's so highly dependent on so many things, though. For example, a lot of appliance class devices (FreeNAS, ESXi, pretty much any BusyBox device) aren't strongly oriented in that direction.

A lot of us older sysadmins recall "Don't login as root, use su". I've never found much of a use for sudo, except as a bootstrap ("sudo csh") on systems like OS X that seem to want to enforce its use and where I'm too lazy to go and fix it to work properly. In decades as a sysadmin I'm having trouble thinking of any time that sudo would have saved me from something bad.

It seems that sudo became real popular around the time that Linux became common, and I started seeing cases where users who couldn't be trusted with su access might still be given sudo access.

Having spent some time looking at ubuntu forums, I'm inclined to believe that for home users there's not much practical difference between the various options (logging in as root, su, sudo). Carelessness can lead to problems regardless of the method you use to administer a home server.

 

[pirateghost]

Having spent some time looking at ubuntu forums ...

You needed eye bleach?

That place is vile

 

[anodos]

You needed eye bleach?

That place is vile

It's a step above reading the comments on local news articles, and it makes me feel like the community here is for the most part articulate and well-educated.

 

[jgreco]

the community here is for the most part articulate and well-educated.

No need to be insulting.